Alice's Webliography

By the question of Donna Haraway, should our bodies end at the skin? I have found an article which can answer this question. It is taken from “Understanding skin, its roles and functions”.
1. Musa, Abdulkadir (17 September 2009) Understanding skin, its roles and functions. http://www.helium.com/items/1589683-understanding-skin-its-roles-and-functions (accessed 11 March 2011) The author is trying to talk about the skin components which are divided into two layers, epidermis and dermis. The author has also talked about the function of human skin which has been divided into three parts, protection, sensitivity and temperature control. Besides, as the skin is the largest organ of the body, it has one more important function which is to give the body a beautiful outlook.
From the article, we know that the main purpose of skin it to give out the beauty of a human. As a result, skin is very important to human. However, Donna Haraway meant whether we as a human must have to use skin to be the outermost of our body. Can we use other materials such as metal to be the outermost of our body? Actually we can look through the functions of the skin. For the protection part, yes, skin and metal or even other materials can help to protect our bodies. However, let’s look at the other two functions of the body. Metal can sense heat or cold. But metal cannot be sensed for pain. Also, for the temperature control, metal cannot adjust the temperature of our bodies. That means when we are hot, it won’t be sweating. So skin is actually can protect human much better than other kinds of materials.
For the issue of human and cyborg, there are many scholars and writers who suggest ways to distinguish the different between them. Some have also included the history of the term “cyborg” and the product cyborg.
2. Cmaree (2011) Cyborgs. http://hubpages.com/hub/Cyborgs (accessed 11 March 2011) The author has suggested that there are two ways to distinguish cyborgs. One is cyborg is a combination of organic and mechanical parts which is biological human. It can also be called augmented human. It can be added some other mechanical parts to do the enhancement. Another form is called bio-mechanoid. It is a combination of mechanical and biological parts which can be covered in human skin tissue. The article has also mentioned some history of cyborg. The term “cyborg” was first used in 1960 by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in their article “Cyborgs and Space”. The cyborg creator is Edgar Allan Poe in his short story “The Man That Was Used Up”. At the end, the author has given some examples of cyborgs in literature, movies and televisions.
3. Schwartz, Lora (1998) Cyborg and Human. http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/cyborg/film/schwartz.html (accessed 11 March 2011) Ms Schwartz human and cyborgs are described based on their physical appearances and characteristics. This means that humans are those like biped Homo sapiens with enlarged fore-brains and cyborgs are made up of human organism such as human skin and mechanism such as machine components under the skin. She has given a few examples such as the protagonist of Bladerunner, the sea diving of Ghost in the Shell's android heroine, and the attachments of the android girls in The Bubble Gum Crisis. However, people usually cannot distinguish whether a person is a human or cyborg because cyborgs look like human and they can have emotion and fallibilities.
Both of these articles have stated that it is somehow difficult to distinguish because people usually use physical appearance such as outlook, skin to define human and cyborg. However, both of them have human organism and emotions. As a result, it is hard to tell whether the one in front of you is human or cyborg. I do agree with this because cyborg is not robot. Cyborg is something like half human and half machines while robot is totally a machine. So emotion can be happened in cyborg but not robot. Besides, people now in real world have not been got in touch with cyborg. Everyone knows cyborg just based on movies, literature, televisions.
Although it seems that cyborgs are still not yet appeared in the real world, it will not be surprised if it appears one day because the new technology is developing rapidly.
4. White, Magi (02 November 2007) Cyborgs: The dream body. http://www.helium.com/items/678025-cyborgs-the-dream-body (accessed 11 March 2011) Mr. White is trying to say that the technology is developing very fast these days and many of the inventions such as walkie talkies can now be found in the real life. So, he suggests that it is not difficult for cyborg to appear in our real world. In this article, dream body is used to describe cyborg. In addition, people would like to have experience of being a cyborg. At the end, he states that cyborg can create a new form of life so that people can be alive in disasters.
Cyborg can be an advantage for some people because cyborg can do something that human cannot be done. They think that cyborg is another kind of superheroes and superwomen. They can survive even in difficult situations.
5. Santone, Jessica (2003) Cyborg. http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/cyborg.htm (accessed 11 March 2011) She talks about some basic information of cyborg at the beginning of the article. She has mentioned the point of embodiment. The advantage of this will be the cyborg will have no race, gender, age and other basic structure of human. She has a strong point which is the violent and dangerous of cyborg.
As we watch movies, we can sometimes see the cyborgs. The function of those cyborgs is usually for protecting the world or their masters by attacking the bad guys or cyborgs. Also, some may change to be dangerous to human after transforming from human to cyborg. When the author states out this point, we should think about whether cyborg is really good for the real world or actually human is better for the world.
In conclusion, skin is an advantage for human and cyborgs. For human, skin can protect them and give signals to human. For cyborgs, skin can cover up their real identities as cyborgs. It will not be long for cyborgs appearing in the real world. So we may change our body structure by adding some mechanics’ things. So, we may change to cyborgs one day.